Count Zero

William Gibson 1986 Buy from Amazon.com

Count Zero is the sequel to Neuromancer, William Gibson’s radical cyberpunk novel which redefined modern scifi. At the end of Neuromancer, the Tessier-Ashpool AIs merged and set themselves free of the constraints that bind AIs. If an AI suddenly became free, how would it know itself, how would it place itself in it’s environment? They became something more. But since then, the resulting intelligence has fragmented, and taken on the identities of the spirits of voodoo. The matrix has changed with the arrival of untethered AI, and Gibson explores what that actually may mean.

The story itself is written in the same disjointed style as Neuormancer, but it fits well with the subject and storyline. Bobby, Turner and Marly, the three whose points of view we share through the novel, are portrayed very well and convincingly. While this novel doesn’t feature Molly, some of the same characters show up, and references to earlier events.

In the 7-8 years since the events in Neuromancer, cyberspace has changed dramatically. Once, a cyberspace cowboy had to be fast and good, now he also has to make deals with the things that inhabit the matrix.

Bobby Newmark is a kid who wants to be a cowboy, and he is given an icebreaker program and a target by a local hood called Two-a-Day. When he jacks in, he’s immediately trapped by Ice, security software that has him flatlined. He is suddenly saved by a vision of a girl in the matrix, reaching down and freeing him.

Two-a-Day was only doing a favour for people higher up the chain, Lucas and Beauvoir. They had needed someone to try out the icebreaker for them, and passed it down. But Two-a-Day’s watchers, keeping an eye on Bobby in the matrix, had seen the girl, and now Bobby is hot property. Lucas and Beauvoir call her the virgin, the chosen of Legba. They have contact with the ghosts of the matrix, and they do deals with them for power and information.

The girl is really Angie Mitchell, the daughter of Maas Biotech’s leading researcher. Her father had done a deal with them, his research was driven by their intelligence, and in return, he had implanted the structures in his daughter’s brain. They allow her to interact directly with the matrix, and for the ghosts to speak with and to her directly.

Turner is a mercenary who specialises in corporate extraction, but he had a complete reconstruction after his body was destroyed on a job. His perspective is changing and he is hired to help Angie’s father escape Maas Biotech, but Angie arrives at the rendevous instead. As he tries to find a safe place for the girl away from both his employers and Maas, he encounters his past and begins to find a new future.

Meanwhile the art sponser Virek has hired a woman called Marly to track a series of art pieces to their source. The location she is looking for is discovered incredibly easily, although her ex-lover is killed finding out. She quickly becomes uncomfortable with working for Virek, and makes her own way to the obscure orbital which is actually the old data cores of the Tessier-Ashpool corporation, supposedly erased, yet strangely still acitve. Virek believes he can be encoded into the matrix the way that the AI was.

This was a bitter sweet novel, there is a great deal of reflection on the past and how experiences shape people into who they are. Both Bobby and Angie are young and just finding who they are, being exposed to new landscapes and finding that their past is not the whole world. Turner and Marly are remembering their own past, how they arrived where they are now and discovering that they have new choices.

Overall it is a worthy sequel to Neuromancer, although somewhat bizarre and twisted in places. It shows yet another aspect of the near future and the people who live in it.

Awards:

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